


Where a Wild Thing Is

by LilyGilt (Yirry)



Category: The Half Bad Trilogy - Sally Green
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animal Transformation, M/M, Wing Kink, offscreen fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-22 20:43:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19999474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yirry/pseuds/LilyGilt
Summary: Free and together, at the end of things, Gabriel and Nathan explore Nathan's gifts.





	Where a Wild Thing Is

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MiriamKenneath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiriamKenneath/gifts).



> Thanks to Meatball42 for beta comments!

The war is over and we're happy, Gabriel and me. We're free. We're not in Wales because our friends on the new Council thought it would be too easy for people to find us there, but we went there before we came here and we'll go back there again, I'm sure. I could make a cut from here to there any time. The land there has a place behind my eyes; I'll never forget what it looks like so much that I can't find it again. But even so, it's one of the first things I draw when we get ourselves settled in the new place.

I feel settled; Gabriel doesn’t, not yet. He says living in our crude, new shelter feels like the year we spent at war, moving from place to place, in tents. He doesn't have the same sense I do that it's different, that we're living with the earth here, not a flea about to be shaken from its back. And he doesn't have my gift to grow trees and bushes the way I like them.

Right now our home is like a cave of trees but I'm thinking of clearing away the trees from the middle and building a structure there, like the bones of a shed, and then growing trees over the top. The underground part can be for winter. It's all right: I can already see that when Gabriel goes away, it will be a thing for me to do to keep building, to make more of a shelter here, so that each time Gabriel comes back, he comes back to more of a home.

I don't mind him going away. He brings back supplies that keep him comfortable here and he brings back news; I don't care as much about the news as he does but I know it matters to him to keep the world in the back of his head. Wales for me, Council doings for him.

He brings books and poetry and he reads to me. We swim and run together and I draw pictures of him.

We have a phrase when he comes back. It's sillier than the one we used in the war but it makes Gabriel happy. One of us says, "I missed you," and the other says, "I'll catch you."

When he's gone, I spend most of the time as an animal. I'm the one who catches things.

* * *

It's usually winter when Gabriel goes away. Even a Black Witch can only tolerate so much cold. There aren't so many Black Witches in Canada, apparently, or northern Russia. When the terrain around is at its most difficult, the hills half ice, half mud, and the nearest roads flooded, I open a cut to somewhere and promise Gabriel I'll open it again in a month's time. Then he goes through, and I close the cut. Often, he finds his way back on foot before the month is up.

He tells me about the myth of the god of death and the goddess of flowers and how the goddess marked the seasons by when she came and went. I like that, especially because the god of death is also the god of the earth. I am blood and legacies and killing and also connected to the Essence. Gabriel, of course, is flowers and gentle things. "Of course," he says, and he kisses me and we're both laughing. "Is that gentle enough for you?" And then I make him be not so gentle.

I spend most of the time while Gabriel's away as an animal. Wolf and eagle most often, but sometimes other birds. Sometimes a deer, once a bee. The bee was so strange. It felt like the part of me that was me was dissolving, streaming away constantly into something else, even though none of me was gone. When I came back to myself as a human I was dizzy for days.

One time, Gabriel brings back a camera. It's small and new but not digital - no chchchch buzzing under my skin. It's instant - the film develops right in the machine. He's surprised when this surprises me. There's a lot about the world - the fain world especially - that I never had time to take in. He takes a picture of me as the eagle, as the wolf. The wolf doesn't like it, so we don't do that again. The eagle feels safer, flying high above the camera in the sky; the eagle doesn't care.

Gabriel stares at the pictures. I'm fascinated too. I suppose if I wanted, I could use these to draw myself. I suppose I could use the camera to fix things in my mind that go too quickly - a sunset here, a particular smile of Gabriel's there - for sketching later. Although the pictures the camera prints are complete and exact, they don't feel final to me. Only a means to something else.

Gabriel jokes that he'll put the eagle and the wolf pictures in his wallet, where people put pictures of their lovers.

* * *

I spend most of the times when Gabriel is gone as an animal. That means that sometimes I'm in animal form when he approaches the hills where we live. Sometimes, the first days he's back, whenever I'm not touching Gabriel or speaking to him, or whenever he isn't in sight, I feel an urge to go back to being an animal again.

Sometimes I do. I know my animal forms don't frighten Gabriel. Though, as he sometimes jokes, they don't appreciate his poetry. I never look at Gabriel through animal eyes and see _threat_.

Gabriel never does anything stupid around me as an animal - like trying to pet me. That's good. The animal isn't tame. I know he wants to, though. He wants to feel how my fur feels the same way he wanted the pictures to keep.

One time he asks, "Could you ever transform halfway? Part human, part something else?"

I think about it. It would have been useful in the past to have the human mind and a wolf's claws. But it's the same problem I had when I was first learning about this Gift. The wolf doesn't exist to do what I tell it to do. When I'm in wolf form, needs and wants look different. I can't put on wings or claws like clothing, and use them like tools for my human goals. Once I have them, the animal determines what comes next. 

As I explain, I wonder if that's part of what I've been doing, while Gabriel's away. Finding the places where human and animal agree.

Gabriel nods, and then he says, "What if it isn't about using the animal for something - what if it's about sharing? Letting the animal experience what it's like to be you?"

I've never thought of that. Being the animal feels so pure - being Nathan feels so complicated. The animal has no scars. "I don't know what I can offer," I say.

"Well," Gabriel says. "I can think of something." He grins, and gives me a joyfully wicked once-over.

It doesn't feel dirty, though, or ridiculous, though maybe it should.

"What do you want to do?"

* * *

Gabriel's watched me transform so many times, now. He suggests an eagle because the wings are the last thing to go - instinctively, I keep them for balance as the rest of me shifts and grows. Also because the wings are beautiful, but I don't mind him thinking that.

It takes several tries. I change into eagle, I spend some time with the eagle, I fly into land, where Gabriel's waiting - and I'm thinking _stay, stay_ , like I used to try to tell my wolf not to eat a deer or not to tear someone's throat out, but gentler. And at first it doesn't work, and it's just me naked in front of Gabriel, but I kiss him and we do a lot of fun things anyway, and in the back of my head I'm telling my animal - _you could have this, stay next time_.

And then one of the times I try he's there with me, the animal. Still wary, still afraid, and I'm trying not to turn the fear into a feedback loop because I'm not sure what to do to get him to stay. Still, I remind us both that if he doesn't it's OK, and that helps.

Gabriel's standing in front of me and he touches my skin, and I lean in to the feeling, trying to concentrate on the feeling of sunlight and Gabriel stroking my chest, my stomach, my thighs, trying to show my animal how good this is. I have thighs and knees and feet but I don't have arms. I didn't really think this through. I don't have hands to touch Gabriel with in return. I try to say something but my vocal chords are in some kind of in between place; I just make a sound.

"Shssh," Gabriel says, "it's okay, let me touch you." So I have to just stand there and let him touch me as the animal trembles with uncertainty and my wings quiver. But it feels good. I keep telling the animal he can stay or not stay, half concentrating on him and whether he's still there, still with me, and half on how good it feels as Gabriel makes love to me.

Gabriel kisses me, and cautiously he pulls me closer, his hand on the small of my back. He's trying very hard not to touch my wings, but with the change of balance they're beating forward. For a moment I feel and see them sweep to either side of him. His mouth is fast on mine and his eyes are awed.

It's hard for him to find places to put his hands and not touch my wings. Eventually, he shrugs, with a very Gabriel grin, and kneels before me. His thumbs knead me where he grips my hips, and he puts his mouth on my cock and sucks in the tip. I groan.

He grins at my groan and the fact that there are still wings mantled above him. He gets to work in earnest, one hand on my ass for balance, the other cupping my balls, mouth sliding up and down my cock. I stop calling to the animal and some part of me lets go. He can stay if he likes. It's up to him.

I have enough to do to keep my balance as Gabriel, kneeling in front of me, sucks and swipes and strokes and grins. He knows what I like, how to suck on the head and then bob his mouth down, how to pull and not to pull too gently, how to lean into the drag when his spit starts to run short. I'm rocking into his mouth and I can tell that the animal's - our - wings are up and spread because of Gabriel's eyes and how they dart from side to side to take them in. And then he closes his eyes and swallows me down and I feel as though I disappear into him, like I'm sucked down into some dark special place under the earth. And he pulls his mouth off me and I stumble to my knees too, and he lifts up his chin and my wing catches his cheek.

"Stay," Gabriel says, and to my surprise I do. The animal sticks around for a little of the afterglow. But only a little, and when my back aches from kneeling with wings I feel them fade and I fall a little forward and catch myself with arms.

"Did he like that?" Gabriel asks.

It feels strange to answer for the animal with words; I kiss Gabriel instead, and hug him tightly, and press us together, my softening cock against his eager one.

"What was it like?" Gabriel asks.

And I say, "You were there."

It's good. I used to think of the animal as something that made everything simpler, clearer, less painful. It's good to remember that there are parts of me as a human that the animal can bask in, too, that I serve his needs as well when I go about on feet, with hands. That I wouldn't exist without him but he wouldn't exist without me. That neither one of us is a cage.


End file.
